There is presently a tremendous effort, both domestically and on an international scale, to develop high temperature materials which are intermetallic compounds for certain commercial elevated temperature applications.
There are two problems with intermetallic compounds particularly those with high melting points, namely limited room temperature ductility and poor high temperature strength. In terms of the first limitation, this causes the material to be of limited potential application since in most such applications some degree of ductility is required and necessary. In the case of advanced materials for propulsion systems, such as jet engine turbine blades, the room temperature ductility required can be quite small. In these cases, application of a given brittle material requires the use of very elaborate and thus expensive machinery.
High temperature-high strength intermetallic compounds also have potential use as a matrix material in intermetallic-ceramic composites. However, the coefficient of expansion of conventional intermetallic alloys are sufficiently different from ceramics that the stresses between these materials that develop upon heating can be sufficiently detrimental to the properties of the composite, and deter such application.